Fabulous Fleischer Cartoons Restored: q&a W/Jane Reid
In the early days of cinema, feature films were often accompanied by short subjects, newsreels, and the beloved cartoon short. In this Golden Age of Hollywood Animation, few names stood taller than Max and Dave Fleischer, whose cartoons were largely distributed by Paramount Pictures. The Fleischers pioneered motion picture animation with the development of the rotoscope technique for capturing realistic motion, allowing them to create human characters like Koko the Clown with greater fidelity than their competitors. At the same time, the Fleischer studio created beloved "rubber hose" style characters like Bimbo the Dog and the classic flapper Betty Boop. Based in New York, the cartoons produced by the Fleischers reflected an urban East Coast sensibility of humour that greatly contrasted with the West Coast style of Disney or Warner Bros. The Fleischers supported African American musicians in their cartoons and brought artists like Cab Calloway in to score their animations, creating early precursors to "music videos" that would greatly influence modern works like Over the Garden Wall and Cuphead. But the greatest success of the studio perhaps came in adapting popular comic characters into cartoons — it was Fleischer who brought Popeye the Sailor from the newspaper funnies into animation, creating the character's iconic theme song and planting his love of spinach and his rivalry with Bluto firmly in the public imagination.
As the 1930s became the 1940s, the studio's ambitions led them to adapt the newest and most popular character to explode into pop culture at that time — Superman! For the first time, a Fleischer cartoon series would be made in full colour, with rotoscoped realistic human characters, and amazing imagination that would not only use the character's existing mythos as a foundation (such as using the established voice actors from the character's radio show) but add to it by creating the visual language of Superman's most iconic power — flight. A character who once only leaped high into the air in the comics now flew through the air, and it was the Fleischer cartoons that have influenced our ideas of what a "flying human" looks like, all the way to modern characters like Goku and Invincible.
After almost 90 years, these classic cartoons have been restored from their original film elements by Fabulous Fleischer Cartoons Restored, an effort led by Max Fleischer's granddaughter Jane Reid. Calgary Cinematheque Society and Quickdraw Animation Society are proud to present six classic restored cartoons from the Fleischer catalogue, introduced by Kevin D.A. Kurytnik and featuring both a mini-documentary on the Fleischer Superman cartoons and a special Q&A after the show with Fleischer Studio restoration expert, Mauricio Alvarado and cartoon historian, Ray Pointers moderated by Kevin Kurytnik. Don't miss a wonderful evening of animation history!
Shorts Line Up
Koko's Earth Control (1928)
Directed by Dave Fleischer
6 mins
Coming at the tail end of the original "Out of the Inkwell" series that made the Fleischers famous, "Koko's Earth Control" also came as the industry was transitioning from silent to sound cartoons. Selected for preservation by the Library of Congress, this short plays with the usual surrealist sense of humour in the Fleischer cartoons as Koko and his dog find a building that controls various physical aspects of the world.
I Never Changes My Altitude (1937)
Directed by Dave Fleischer
6 Min
Although we understand that Popeye and his rival Bluto are sailors, after four years of cartoons the characters had shown they could be placed in almost any situation. In this classic of slapstick animated comedy, Popeye and Bluto become aviators in their continuing quest to vie for the affections of Olive Oyl. Featuring Fleischer's "tabletop" process for creating three-dimensional backgrounds for their cartoons.
Is My Palm Read? (1933)
Directed by Dave Fleischer
5 Min
The comedy in this short is an excellent example of the kind of "stream of consciousness" plots that often accompanied Betty Boop's strange animated adventures, featuring Bimbo the Dog and Koko the Clown as supporting characters as Betty has her fortune told and finds herself fighting off ghosts and traveling through portals on a tropical island, all while getting into the kind of risqué situations the character was famous for.
The Mad Scientist (1941)
Directed by Dave Fleischer
10 Min
Produced on a lavish budget of $50,000, about double the cost of an average cartoon, this initial Superman cartoon set an incredible standard for action, style, and animation that continues to influence our modern-day pop culture to this very day. With moody lighting, art deco backgrounds, and incredible science fiction feats such as the Man of Steel beating back a death ray with his bare hands, the Fleischer Superman is a high-water mark for American animation that directly inspired the beloved Batman and Superman animated series of the 1990s, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Short Subject.
Terror on the Midway (1942)
Directed by Dave Fleischer
8 Min
The final Superman short produced by the Fleischers before their studio was absorbed into Paramount Pictures and became "Famous Studios," this adventure finds Lois & Clark at a circus that explodes into chaos when the wild animals escape. A kind of dark inversion of Disney's Dumbo (1941), "Terror on the Midway" features some incredible animation of animals from the Fleischer team, as well as the beautiful dramatic lighting the Superman cartoons were known for as the circus lits aflame.
The Arctic Giant (1942)
Directed by Dave Fleischer
9 Min
In our grand finale, the Man of Steel faces off against a giant (and scientifically dubious) dinosaur thawed out from ice in this influential short! Predating classic monster films like The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953) and Godzilla (1954) by over a decade, "The Arctic Giant" sees the dinosaur quickly become a threat to the entire city as Superman battles it. Once again, we see the great degree that these Fleischer cartoons have on our modern pop culture, where giant monsters and superheroes still reign supreme at the box office.
Community Partner: Quickdraw animation society
Incorporated in 1984, the Quickdraw Animation Society (QAS) is Calgary’s home for independent animation. They promote the art of animation through courses, workshops, screenings, and production resources.